What's Up Redhead
by slytherincailin
Summary: AU. Sequel to Buckle Up Blondie. After receiving a message from Ginny Weasley, whom he believed to be dead, Draco is forced with only one option. He must risk his own soul in an attempt to forge a Portal between his new life and the Wizarding World. All for the sake of a Weasley. How ironic. Creature!fic Mpreg Slash Original Characters Aliens
1. Chapter 1

**DISCLAIMER: ** The following is a work of fan-fiction based upon the world and characters of Harry Potter which are owned exclusively by J. K. Rowling. The following stories contains reference content to places, people, animals and situations which are located with the books of Harry Potter, a published source owned by J. K. Rowling and publishers. The following is not an attempt to claim the world of Harry Potter, though original characters have been created. This is primarily a work of fan-fiction written for the enjoyment of other writers and fans who come across it.

Chapter One:

"Makes perfect sense."

Albus scowled at his mate, earning only a quirked eyebrow from the blue-eyed, lilac-haired Elder. Seanchaí returned his gaze Draco. The blonde was seated in the centre of the Elder's circular room, having been forced into sharing what had happened to him after Albus had had a vision of him speaking to Ginny Weasley, his mother.

Bród remained frozen behind his smaller mate, his green eyes wide as they scanned the Draco for signs of fever.

"Get of me, you brute!" the former Slytherin yelped, "I'm not sick. What happened, happened! The Weaslette came and told me everything." Harry frowned at the name, the lines on his face emphasising to the point where he looked war-scarred. "It's possibly you had a bout of delirium, Malfoy. You could have been imagining things."

Albus shook his head, ignoring the indignant flush staining Draco's cheeks. "No, father, I saw him speak to mother. I saw him reach out as if to take her hand. Whatever happened in that hospital room was very real. I just don't understand..."

Lily hushed her brother's frustrated tone, her green eyes a mirror of her daughter's who sat cross-legged beside her. "No use getting in a mess because of it, Al. Breathe, we'll figure this out." Geal nodded his head stoically by her side, as always in agreement with what the fiery redhead had to say.

Throughout the arguments encompassing the meeting, Bek kept her glowing green gaze trained on the younger Malfoy, who deftly avoided her gaze. The feel of Scorpius' lips still lingered against her own, sparking electricity through her body. Why he had kissed her she couldn't comprehend. Scorpius had been her enemy and her best friend for sixteen years, a constant annoyance or comfort. What he had done had shifted their relationship to unsteady grounds and she was not pleased. She would have to tackle the answers from him as soon as given the opportunity.

Scorpius heaved a sigh of relief when Bek seemed to lose interest in him, and turned her mask-like features to Seanchaí. Were someone to ask him why he had kissed Bek, he would not have been able to give a direct answer. At the time he had been consumed with happiness at the end of a lifetime of war and death and all of that happiness had circulated straight to Bek and the power she seemed to exude constantly. He had adored her at that moment as he had adored her in the moments when she would rest her head upon his shoulder. There was little logic or thought behind it. And now with everything that had happened, his mind seemed hazy, unable to focus on one singular thing but instead attempting to take it all in. It would only be a matter of time before he fainted.

Albus rubbed his head slowly, his fingers tangling in the length of his black hair. "So, what we know is that Ginny and others may be trapped in some Otherworld between life or death and Draco was to bring the message to us so that something could be done about it." He groaned and dropped his face against his palms, "what can possibly be done about that?"

He relaxed as Seanchaí placed slender hands on his shoulders, the older man's white wings snapping open to fan the heated room with much needed air. It calmed his headache somewhat. "We could attempt to open the portal."

His words were met with silence broken only by the sudden gasps by his fellow Elders who had, until this point remained on the edge of the room.

"Are you mad, Seanchaí?"

"Trying something such as that will only result in the devastation of our own world."

"It is lunacy to even suggest it, we have no grounding power, no protection."

Seanchaí growled low in his throat, an earthy sound that caused the Elders to cease in their cries. He let powder-blue orbs fall on Draco's frightened face. "We have a grounding power now. Draco's soul was sent to that place for a reason. It is his soul alone that can travel there again and bring back the bridge with the help of those who are trapped there."

Bród tightened his grasp around the blonde's waist, mindful of the wound that still existed there. He gaped at Seanchaí with terrified eyes. "You can't be suggesting that Draco be sent to create the Portal once more?" he whispered, his tone distraught.

Seanchaí watched him with tender eyes, his silence suggesting that that was precisely what he intended Draco to do. Albus frowned and exchanged worried looks with Geal. "Seanchaí" he said quietly, "Sending Draco into a temporary portal is dangerous. He could be lost forever. Even if he is not, the time difference between the world's is huge. One world will have to compromise. We could end up destroying the balance and pushing Earth back hundreds of years."

Seanchaí sighed and for once, the sound was a weary one. "An Earth without magic will never have progressed in a good way. Perhaps pushing them back will restore what they need to become enlightened. Time makes its own rules, Albus, it is up to Draco whether he wishes to do this or not. No one will force or influence him."

Most heads glanced downwards, not meeting Draco's eyes for fear the pressure would mount on the blonde and cause him to run. Draco met only the eyes of his son, Scorpius. The boy looked petrified, but resigned, as though he could see his Ahha's future already mapped out before them. The blonde held out a hand to grasp the sixteen-year-olds shoulder softly, smiling when his fingers brushed against the crimson wing there.

"I'll come back to you."

Scorpius' mouth set in a grim line before he nodded, his green eyes becoming hard. "You had better."


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter Two:

Malfoy's did not cower.

Malfoy's did not risk their lives, their very souls for the sake of others. That was something too un-Slytherin to comprehend.

And yet, here he lay, one hand limply resting on the crested tattoo on his chest, the symbol of his magic. The Elders worked around him, their wings flared and frigid, as if one stray movement could send the whole ritual awry.

Draco watched them work through narrowed eyes, hissing as each new individual strand of magic wound its way through his defence, into his system. Harry sat not far away, his hand gripped in Draco's and offering the one thing Potter had in abundance, courage. Had somebody told him years ago that he would one day seek comfort from Potter's grip as a friend and ally, he would have laughed in their faces.

Should he turn his face to the left, he was certain he would glimpse Bród and Scorpius in the same position they had been in from the start. His mate pale and wide-eyed, those rust-coloured arms wrapped securely around a snow-white son. But he could not look at them. What if he never saw them again? What if something went wrong? Could his soul really survive having abandoned the two people who made his life worth living?

He closed his eyes with a sigh, opening them not a second later to find Seanchaí bent over him, his powder-blue eyes soft. "Time to sleep, Draco."

But he wasn't tired, he wasn't remotely sleepy. He wanted to see Bród, even if it was the last time he ever saw the man. But the thought became a senseless one, trailing and swerving until it no longer had meaning. It no longer had a purpose. He fell into darkness, his body left behind him in a manner similar to apparating, but softer, gentler, as though his spirit had been eased out of it. He let go happily, mindful only of the colourful threads of magic that bound his core and the hand still firmly gripped in his own.

###

He awoke with a hiss, jolting upright though his body protested it. His muscles shrieked at the sudden movement, causing him to double over and all but lose the contents of his stomach.

"Here, take it easy, don't rush yourself."

The gentle hands on his back were welcome, but the voice made him groan.

"And just how," he dry-heaved, gripping his stomach firmly as he tried to stand, "did you manage to follow me down here, Harry?"

A strong arm helped him to stand, offering support when his balance momentarily left him. He turned narrowed grey eyes to a face. Potter was grinning. "No idea, but I'll bet I've given Seanchaí a minor heart attack."

"Wonderful," Draco groaned as he stretched, feeling out his body. It felt, somehow, new, as though someone had suddenly ripped him from his old skin and folded him inside of this one. Sluggish, slow to react and sore, the fit was uncomfortable but not unpleasant. It was perhaps the oddest sensation he had ever had the misfortune to experience. He turned back to Harry slowly, one eyebrow quirking when his vision finally settled.

"You look good."

The older man smirked, one hand reaching up to rub at an emerald green eye, bright and youthful. "Thank you for noticing."

The blonde couldn't help but roll his eyes. "No, Harry, you look younger. Whatever magic exists down here obviously works for you. Not that you're not still an old man compared to me but... definitely younger."

Harry merely hummed in response, bringing a hand up to examine the lack of the aging he had become so accustomed to. "I partly guessed." He sighed, tilting his head upwards. Draco followed the movement, wincing when all that met his eyes was an endless sky of murky greyness. The sight turned his stomach and forced his head downwards, lest he become lost trying to find the sun.

"You've gotten younger too."

"I beg your pardon?" Draco brought a hand to his face, frowning when he met only softened skin, devoid of the dark circles and frown lines that had begun to meld with his features because of the war. "Merlin, that's strange... What do you suppose caused it?"

Harry shrugged and cast his gaze over the horizon, squinting into the mist that seemed to exist like a heavy veil over the scenery. The rocks beneath their feet were coarse, round and loose. They floated as though submerged in water when Harry kicked one, before settling again in a different place. "Seanchaí did say something about the Portal messing with time. Perhaps it dragged us back a decade or two."

"Implying that, should we return back home, it will drag us forward once more? A pity," Draco shook his head, "I could get used to being twenty again." Harry chuckled at that, the sound echoing in the huge space and landing flatly against the round stones and stagnant air. Draco felt his unease sharpen. "We should go. Hanging around in this place is not something that I believe would be very beneficial."

"Too true," Harry grunted, before casting a look firstly right, and then left. "Which way?"

Draco tapped a finger against his bottom lip. Each direction spanned out in front of them for miles, making it impossible to see the destination. Should they go left and hope for the best, or right and prey they do not end up wandering the Otherworld for millennia. It was a decision he could not, in clear conscience, make on his own.

Sighing, the blonde stooped to pick up a rock, being sure to marr one side of its flat surface against the ground. He clutched the thing in one hand, before glancing at Harry. "Heads," he announced, holding up the scratched face, "we go right."

Without waiting for an answer, the blonde tossed the stone into the air where it hung bizarrely for the longest second. Slowly, it began to drop, sluggishly and twisting eerily in the thick air until it landed with a soft click amongst the others. Harry darted a glance at Draco, his lip tugging up in a smile. "Left it is."

###

"I'm sorry, I thought you just said that my father has followed Draco into the Otherworld, but that can't be right. No, no, you wouldn't allow something like that to happen, it would be far too foolish. I must have heard wrong."

Albus glowered at his sister, offering a swift elbow into her side when she only glared back. "Stand down, Lily," he growled, "this isn't Seanchaí's fault, nor is it the blame of anyone who was in that room. When your father is Harry Potter, you expect the unexpected."

Lily sneered in response, before her shoulders slumped. "I know," she whispered, "It was not my intention to blame the Elders or your mate, Al, but I'm scared. This is a journey Dad really shouldn't have had to make."

Jamie sighed from where he sat against a tree, his hands digging into the warm dirt beside him. "You're acting as if this is something he can't come back from. You should have more faith in Dad, he's been through alot worse." He glanced up at his lover Aoibh, smiling when the golden haired alien winked at him. "You'll see, he'll come back and he'll bring Mom back with him."


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter Three:

"Well… This is boring."

"And what exactly did you expect?"

"I don't know," Harry shrugged as they walked, his eyes never leaving the fog-filled air even as the ground levelled out beneath them and became more mud than stone. His green eyes remained locked on the barely visible horizon, certain that if he were to look away, he would miss something. "demons I guess."

The blonde beside him drew to a halt, before snorting and moving forward once more. "I don't know what muggle nonsense has been squashed into that brain of yours, Harry, but demons? Really? There's no such thing."

"How can you be so sure?" Harry watched as Draco bent to pick up a handful of whatever it was they were walking on. It flowed like sand in the palm of his hand, pouring into the liquid air and hanging there like a glob of thick paste.

"Well, because I am," Draco replied, his silver eyes moving to watch Harry as the man poked at the suspended mud. "You don't see demons running around in everyday life do you? The only demons we have are werewolves and vampires and they're just people who were in the wrong place at the wrong time."

Harry poked at the glob again, frowning when it slid in the air more quickly, like a drop of water down the side of a glass. "You once believed aliens weren't real."

Draco stilled, his arm halting from where it had been reaching to snatch at the mud. "I also believed I'd grow up to be married to a pureblood and have one heir and grow old never knowing what happiness was. Sometimes it is a good thing to be wrong, Harry, but demons are one thing I draw the line at."

It was then they heard the shriek. It was a normal shriek, if a shriek could be called normal. It didn't hang in the strained air as their voices had when they had called out, nor did it sound like a shriek from any demon Harry could think of. It was a human shriek.

"That's Hermione."

"Harry, wait!"

Draco cursed as the older man took off into the heavy fog, following behind swiftly lest he lose sight of Harry and end up alone in this God forsaken place. So swiftly was he moving that he tripped over the kneeling figure in the mud, and came crashing down longside her.

He pulled himself up on shaking limbs, silver eyes unable to pull away from the woman that knelt beside him. Her once frizzy hair was lank, limp as she gazed through unseeing eyes at a mound on the floor. Her lips moved softly, whispers unheard flowing off her tongue in an endless chant.

"Granger?"

She snapped around at the sound of his voice, her large brown eyes pinned on him. "I lost him." The voice was hoarse, defeated and not a tone he was willing to believe had ever come from Hermione Granger. "I lost them."

She rolled dazed eyes back towards the mound, a mound Draco could now see was a very ugly orange cat. He dragged his sight from the dead animal, wrinkling his nose as he locked a firm arm around Granger's skinny arm. "Potter!"

"Malfoy?"

Draco swivelled rapidly, dragging Granger upright as he stood to face the threat. His mouth popped open in disbelief. "Weasley?"

The Ron Weasley that stood in front of him, however, was a far cry from the man he'd once been. Thin and older and haggard looking, the redhead took one look at Hermione and dropped to his knees, his arms reaching to wrap around her legs. She wobbled, her gaze snapping from the orange cat to the redhead's fiery locks. "Ron?"

"Do you have any idea how long I've been searching for you?"

Broken. Broken was the only word Draco could use to describe Ron Weasley. He drew back slowly as Granger ran a small hand through the man's bright hair, her eyes shutting in disbelief. "I lost… myself… I thought we were goners."

"If it hadn't been for Draco, you were."

The pair turned, eyes wide. The shriek Hermione let loose was purely emotional at the sight of Harry. Tears filled her eyes as she dragged Ron to his feet and wrapped her arms around the green-eyed man. She wept as he pulled her close, Ron's steady hand on her back the only thing keeping her from falling. "Oh, I thought you were dead! We all thought you were lost forever!"

Harry hushed her gently, smiling softly at Ron before his gaze landed on Draco and his expression became sharp. "What are we going to do?"

Draco grimaced as he stepped forward on the intimate moment between friends. "There's nothing to do but take them with us, Potter. Seanchaí said the Elders would only have enough energy to bring us back with one try, we can't send them now. Much as I hate to say it, they'll have to stay down here with us until we're certain we have everyone."

He glanced towards the older woman that was Hermione. She looked weary. Though no more than forty in his eyes, her own brown orbs were dazed and tired and her hair was littered with a silver he wasn't sure she could ever be rid of. "Do you have any idea how many more are down here?"

She watched him warily, her hand reaching out to grip Ron's. "There were… many, many people who wanted to come with us, but we had to test it. We had to be sure that it would work. But it didn't… it dropped us here… in this… hell! It was supposed to work!"

"Hush Mione," Harry ran a hand down her arm, his fingers cupping her cheek until she looked back at him. "How many of you were there to test it?"

The brunette sniffed, her eyes brimming with tears. "Myself, Ron, Ginny, McGonegal. Only four. But… where we are, there are others. They were… fragments of a person's soul that never made it to the Summerland. Albus… Albus was lost to us, too broken to be fixed and Minerva wouldn't leave him. I lost her and when I lost her I lost myself… But Luna, oh, Luna wasn't broken! She was already so lost in her daydreams before she died in the battle at Hogwarts, her soul is here! Snape was here…"

"Severus?" Draco interrupted the witch with a gasp, his hand outstretched as though he could grasp the words she was saying. "Severus is here?"

Hermione shook her head, "I don't know if he's broken, Malfoy. I don't know what part of him exists here, he pushed us all away before we could find out. Snape may be here, or just a fragment of his soul that got lost when he tried to find his way to the Summerland."

The blonde nodded, his mouth a thin line as he registered the implications. His Godfather could be here, then again, the man could be so insane from the splitting of his soul that he would be of no use to anyone. Not the Sev that Draco had admired and learned from. "I understand."

Harry watched him for a moment before he gave a grim nod. "Hanging around won't help us. This place is starting to pull at my nerves. C'mon, let's keep going forward."

###

Albus watched as Seanchaí trailed a slender hand over the runes now etched into the skin of his arms, before sighing and folding a wet cloth over the rune that had begun to bleed. "Stupid, stubborn fool," he whispered as Seanchaí hissed, his blue eyes wide with sympathy. "Had you allowed me or one of the other Elders to share the burden this wouldn't be nearly as painful."

Seanchaí glanced towards him with glowing blue eyes, his lilac hair curling as he leaned in to press a chaste kiss against his mate's lips. "I would not have been able to live with myself had I put you or one of my allies in danger. Taking the connection to Draco upon myself ensures that, should anything go wrong and they become tapped, it is I and I alone who will suffer for it." He cupped the younger man's cheek with a gentle hand. "Never would I put you in danger of suffering, beloved."

Albus sighed into the hand, before kissing the man's palm softly. "I would suffer every day if it meant that you would go unharmed, Seanchaí. You are my life now."


End file.
